Bristol is the largest city in the southwest of England, with a population of about a half million. It has a modern economy built on the creative media, electronics and aerospace industries, and its city-center docks have been redeveloped as centers of heritage and culture.

Yet even such vibrant midsize cities have pockets of deprivation, where poverty, poor education and the social ills that go with them are handed down from one generation to the next. For Bristol, that pocket is the neighborhood of Knowle West. The closure of a major factory in the Nineties caused large-scale job losses and a third of residents today are classified as economically inactive.

Investing in a Better Future

To give the 12,000 residents of Knowle West a chance at a better future, Bristol’s Council has invested in digital-age programs that aim to transform life at the individual, family and community levels. Basic infrastructure is part of the mix. Bristol has developed the Filwood Green Business Park in Knowle West, which provides 76 units of “green” office and workshop space for small to midsized businesses, as well as shared office space for solo workers. It has expanded bus routes to better connect the neighborhood with the rest of Bristol, after surveys found that most residents needed to own a car to get to work.

As is typical of low-income areas, Knowle West is underserved with broadband, and carriers force local businesses to pay the capital cost of running high-speed lines to their premises. Bristol tapped a UK government program called the Connection Voucher Scheme to cover the cost for 1,500 local businesses, which has generated more than £2 million of digital infrastructure investment.

Training for Bristol’s Creative Economy

Digital investment of another kind has created the Knowle West Media Centre, where residents receive free skills development programs including digital manufacturing and business basics. A work-study program trains residents while having them work on social action projects that gives them work experience. After-school groups for children and young people teach digital literacy and creative skills, and supply leadership coaching for 18-25 year olds.

In the Junior Digital Producer program, young people who have been unemployed learn in-demand industry skills while delivering a community-based project. The Media Centre also has its own creative agency, Eight, where budding freelancers undertake paid commissions with the support of more experienced creatives. In its most recent year, users of the Media Centre produced nearly 500 pieces of furniture for the Filwood Green Business Park and created 8 businesses and community enterprises. Nearly 90% of participants in the Junior Digital Producer program go into paid work or self-employment.

The Bristol Approach

The Media Centre has also played a central role in social innovation. Beginning in 2016, it organized an effort by artists and designers in Bristol to help residents across the city identify issues they were passionate about tackling, a process that has been named “The Bristol Approach.” These ranged from damp problems in homes to the difficulty shopkeepers had in identifying customer flows. The organizers assembled diverse groups of residents, artists, technologists, makers and activities to explore the issues and pursue solutions. The “Dampbusters” group, for example, investigated the use of sensors in homes to gather relevant data and use it to gain local and national attention to the problem.

The Media Centre was also the channel for a European Union-funded project that led to creation of My Knowle West, a smartphone app that provides an online space for sharing stories, tips, images and inspiration, while increasing the confidence of users in smartphone and tablet technology.

In 2016, the Bristol Post newspaper reported that Knowle West was “the loneliest area of Bristol.” Surveys indicated that only 39% of the people of the neighborhood thought that people of different backgrounds could get along, compared with 61% city-wide. Attacking that social isolation – and the accompanying deprivations in health, education, income and employment – is Knowle West Together. It is a multi-agency group dedicated to improving quality of life in the neighborhood. Members include residents, charities, schools and social agencies. Since 2013, the group has organized community festivals that reached over 1,000 people, educated them on the social services available to them, and reinvigorated Knowle West’s primary retail center, Filwood Broadway.

The problems of neighborhoods like Knowle West are common everywhere, and the challenge to municipal leaders the same on every continent. Step by step, Bristol is changing the lives of the people of this neighborhood and offering them hope of integration into the growth economy of the 21st Century.

Population: 12,267

Website: www.bristol.gov.uk

Smart21 2017

Keelung City borders New Taipei City on the south and the Pacific Ocean on the north. Once the 7th largest container port in the world, the city gradually lost its position due to the lack of land for expansion, rising foreign competition and the decline of the domestic coal industry, which peaked in 1968. But Keelung’s seafaring days were not behind it, thanks to the growth the passenger cruise industry. Today, 89% of inbound cruise ships dock at the Port of Keelung, bringing 690,000 passengers to Taiwan, who generate more than NTD 6 billion in revenue. The city’s future depends on how those passengers experience what locals call the Rainy Port.

Keeping Connected

Residents of Keelung City enjoy fixed broadband at 100 Mbps, reaching 90% of households. To support its tourist industry, it has established a gigabit free public Wi-Fi system in the Port of Keelung, offering users up and downloads at 30 Mbps through 1,100 hotspots. Riding on that network is the Seamless Travel Service, which provides a combined e-ticket to popular destinations, travel information and real-time schedules for the city’s extensive transit system as well as discounts at local stores and a mobile payment solution. A network of digital interactive billboards at tourist hotspots promote local attractions and let tourists search for more information. The result is what Keelong calls “the Smiling Port.”

Cultural Products

Keelung also collaborates intensively with local businesses and universities to upgrade access to the cultural offerings of the city. It established a Creative Center, which offers an exhibition and conference center, hotel and restaurant.
More than a real estate project, the Center hosted its first design competition in 2016 to promote local cultural and creative products, and to introduce high school and university students to local companies. It holds frequent workshops with citizens and community groups to develop and test ideas for further revitalizing the city. One such project focuses on creating “small yet beautiful spaces” in neighborhoods that felt into disrepair during the previous period of economic decline. In 2014, thirteen renovation projects were proposed and completed.

Making Education Smarter

Keelung’s future as a tourist destination and creative city depend on a highly educated workforce. It has invested in a robust broadband infrastructure for its network of 60 schools, reaching 4 Gbps in 2015 on its way to 10 Gbps in the future. On this platform, it introduced a one-to-one tablet program for students and a “happy student card,” which generates data on learning outcomes and extracurricular activities not just within the school building but at local sports centers, public libraries and museums. The city and the National Taiwan University of Science established a 3D School for Makers, where students learn creative thinking and hands-on technical skills using the latest 3D printing and manufacturing technologies. The city’s goal is to establish a classroom for makers in every school.

Fighting Shipborne Pollution

Major ports around the world struggle to manage the air pollution produced by the massive diesel engines of cargo and passenger ships. The Port of Keelung established a coastal power system for docked ships that reduced polluting gases and particles by 96%. But sustainability is not just a business process in Keelung. The city has committed itself to low-carbon office operations and energy conservation across its facilities and transit system. That transit system itself drives sustainability by providing an attractive alternative to vehicles. Keelung City has the fifth lowest ownership of cars and motorcycles per capita in Taiwan.

Neighborhoods in the city compete for honors in carbon reduction and sustainability contests, and are honored for innovative sustainability projects. These range from the conversion of streetlights to LED and recycling programs to resident education and the renovation of abandoned telephone booths into rainwater installation art.

River Corridor Project

Keelung has much greater ambitions for the future. It signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Taichung, our 2013 Intelligent Community of the Year, to collaborate on smart city projects. Three regions in the city have been identified for development of an Array of Things to monitor environmental conditions. The city has established a smart healthcare platform for managing individual cases across multiple healthcare institutions. A major plan calls for redeveloping a stagnant warehouse district as the Keelung River Corridor, home to such emerging industries as marine biotechnology and residential neighborhoods. Under Mayor Lin Yu-chang, Keelung City is working hard to leverage its maritime past while creating vast new possibilities for the future.

Population: 371,878

Website: www.kclg.gov.tw

Smart21 2017 | 2019

The County of Grey is a rich cultural center of Ontario with a long history of agriculture and bustling water trade. Located in "cottage country" with a population of 92,0000, the county is home to the Summerfolk Music and Crafts Festival and the Festival of Northern Lights, and the county seat of Owen Sound was even named the 2004 Cultural Capital of Canada. Like many rural areas, however, Grey County now struggles to hold onto its agricultural heritage and strength in an increasingly digital world.

The SWIFT Initiative

In a rural county with some community densities as low as four people per km2, broadband access is always a challenge. Grey County is one of the 15 counties in southwestern Ontario that make up the Western Ontario Wardens' Caucus, which has developed the SWIFT Initiative to address major gaps in broadband coverage and lack of fiber-optic connectivity. The SWIFT Initiative began in May 2011 as a discussion about the importance of broadband to the Southwestern Ontario economy and about what regional leaders could do to address the lack of modern Internet infrastructure throughout rural Ontario. The initiative is intended to direct funding from municipal, provincial and federal governments to address gaps in broadband infrastructure and to support increased market participation of local industries and businesses in the digital economy. Five years later, the governments of Canada and Ontario announced $180 million in combined funding for the initiative. This funding will also trigger more private investments from ISPs.

The Launch Pad

The Launch Pad Youth Activity and Technology Centre (Launch Pad YATC) in Grey County is a skills building center for youths aged 12 to 18 that first opened its doors in 2015. The center was created for Grey and Bruce County youth as a learning environment with access to technology, skill training in trades valuable to the local economy, as well as arts and recreation outside normal school hours. Since opening its doors, Launch Pad has gained 250 members and has become a popular regional success story. Demand continues to grow for its services, prompting a $200,000 renovation currently in progress that will convert part of the space into a regional trades and training facility to prepare the future workforce.

As Launch Pad’s success grows, economic developers, educators and community developers across the region are now looking to learn how its model can be replicated in other communities in the county and across rural Ontario. The center has received multiple awards since its founding, including a 2016 Ontario Economic Development Award from the Economic Developers Council of Ontario. Launch Pad YATC was also selected as the 2016 Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) Ontario Conference Charity.

Uniting Past and Future with Digital Agriculture

Agriculture and the food industry are Grey County’s largest employers and contributors to the local GDP. As in many rural communities, however, the county’s producers are facing many challenges, from competition from lower-priced imports to ever-increasing land values. The Ag 4.0 initiative is Grey County’s answer: a project aimed at connecting agricultural producers with local technical and creative professionals to promote collaboration and innovation. The initiative also seeks to support the development of a generation of rural innovators among local youth, hoping to apply their skills as “digital natives” to the requirements of “digital agriculture.”

The Ag 4.0 initiative has sparked new working relationships - and renewed old ones - with many key stakeholders and champions of the issue, including the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Georgian College, the University of Guelph, Grey—Ag Services, and Grey County’s member municipalities. To formalize these collaborations, Grey County hosted its first Ag 4.0 Summit and Innovation Tour in November 2016, providing opportunities for producers to learn from agricultural innovators and connect with professionals from other related creative and technological fields.

Solving Rural Transportation with MOVIN’GB

Travel in Grey County is nearly impossible without a personal vehicle, with many areas offering little to no reliable public transportation. In April 2016, the county along with Home & Community Support Services launched the first phase of the MOVIN’GB pilot program. MOVIN’GB is a transportation program, a support service that provides rides to non-emergency medical appointments, shopping, banking, and various social activities and programs. The program aims to help seniors and those with disabilities find affordable transit in the Grey County municipalities of Owen Sound, Meaford, Blue Mountains and Grey Highlands. The MOVIN’GB pilot project helps both to decrease per-ride costs for passengers and to increase profitability for service providers, not to mention beginning to address the climate impacts of a transportation system based solely on private vehicles. If it proves successful, Grey County plans to expand the program’s service area to include other parts of Grey and Bruce Counties and also its eligibility to include youths and people without access to affordable transportation.

The future looks bright in Grey County as farmers step into the digital world with the help of their technically-skilled neighbors and local youths train to become the next generation of innovators.

Population: 92,568

Website: www.grey.ca

Smart21 2017 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025

Top7 2017

Chiayi is a provincial city of 270,000 in southcentral Taiwan, midway between Taichung and Tainan. Ninety-five percent of its economy is in the services sector – wholesale and retail, transportation and warehousing, and accommodation and food – which employs three-quarters of the workforce.

In 2014, however, Chiayi was ranked as having the worst air quality in Taiwan, and Mayor Twu Shiing-jer, a physician, has dedicated his administration to improving life in the city in this and many other areas.

Cleaning the Air

Working with ASUS, the city has established a network of cloud-connected air-quality monitoring stations called the Air Box. The results of measurement are displayed in real time on LED billboards on main access roads. A public electric bike network, with 58 charging stations, is reducing automobile trips, while an environmental education program is reaching schools and community groups. In 2015, the city succeeded in reducing fine air particulate concentration by 12%, which represented the biggest gain in the nation.

Also in 2015, Chiayi City established the “Solar Photovoltaic Setup and Promotion Team” and the “Renewable Energy Committee.” The city’s location on the Tropic of Cancer makes it an ideal place for solar energy development, and the city has currently installed solar panels on the rooftops of 38 public buildings with 32 more expected to be outfitted by the end of 2017. The currently outfitted public buildings are capable of producing 3.6 megawatts of power annually and are expected to earn Chiayi NDT 77 million in revenue over the next 20 years.

Broadband, Open Data and E-Services

Chiayi government and private carriers have blanketed the city with 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, ranking second for density in the nation. Over an 18-month period, more than 1.5 million users accessed the network. To support adoption, it created a government-citizen committee to hold public hearings, seminars, online idea generation and voting on priorities and projects. At the urging of that committee, Chiayi also completed an open data platform in 2016, which contained 279 information entries as of August 2017, with many more on the way. The city has also established an E-Service Counter that provides single sign-on to more than 500 applications used by 210,000 subscribers.

To further spread E-Service access throughout the city, the Chiayi Transportation and Tourism Department is currently in the process of introducing intelligent bus stops with 4G WiFi services available on their buses. The city has also equipped its 59 neighborhood directors with tablet PCs connected to the city’s open data platform and E-Service applications, allowing them to function as mobile service stations for their neighborhoods. These directors can now help residents with information inquiries, online application usage and city surveillance reporting, among other services.

Innovating on Tradition

The city attracts more than 440,000 tourists every month, who contribute over NTD 1 billion every year through such events as the International Marching Band Festival (pictured above). Innovation in Chiayi has focused on finding ways to use its success in tourism to drive further growth in the economy. The city is home to Taiwan’s largest egg company, Chinyi Eggs, which ships nationwide. Recently, the company has transformed its Chiayi facilities into a “tourism factory.” The company already turns over more than NTD 1 billion but, with the help of government investment, is creating a new line of business opening up its processes to visitors.

Building on the success of the long-running International Marching Band Festival, Chiayi has also created a new event: the Chiayi Arts Festival. The festival stages performing arts in streets, parks, bookstores, schools and restaurants over a two-month period and features a mix of local performing artists as well as internationally known performers. In its first year, the Chiayi Arts Festival received national news coverage and generated NTD 30 million in economic impact.

Huashih Co. is a long-established firm that uses spices and herbal ingredients in the manufacture of cleaning and cosmetic products. It has collaborated with universities and the city to drive innovation in two directions. One is in the application of biotech R&D to identify local plants with useful commercial properties and extract their active ingredients to create new products. The second is the creation of another tourism factory, where visitors can see how products are created and manufactured and buy them from a retail outlet.

Chiayi City was known as “The City of Forest” during the Japanese colonial era, due to its flourishing wood industry. After operating for 50 years, the city’s local Shunyi Wood became De Lin Intl and set up a tourist factory called Wood Lover. The company cooperated with the Cycling & Health Tech Industry R&D Center to develop interactive entertainment services for the tourism factory. Through the partnership, De Lin Intl also set up sensors, gyroscopes, pressure sensors and temperature and humidity sensors in the woods to learn more about how visitors experienced the woods and what actions interested them to improve the quality of the factory tours.

Education and Training

Chiayi is also investing in the digital skills of its people. All schools have been equipped with Wi-Fi and a portal for student-teacher interaction and the sharing of lessons plans among instructors. Beginning in 2017, the schools will introduce specialized classes in coding, robotics and other technology fields. For the general population, the city has developed training courses in basic and advanced digital skills. For the business community, the city has invested in workshops on mobile payments and an Industrial Innovation Center focused on health R&D. As of 2015, over one hundred researchers and 18 enterprises were located there. The city is also driving collaboration between industry and the College of Management at National Chiayi University to develop training specific to the needs of local business.

To encourage youth training and development in particular, the Industrial Development and Investment Promotion Committee of Chiayi has worked with Wufeng University and the Chiayi Youth Entrepreneur Association to hold the National Youth Creative Application Competition. The competition includes high school and college-level student teams competing on creative projects designed to teach them business values. The government has also begun setting up co-working spaces to encourage young entrepreneurs to mingle and share ideas as well as find investors. Idle spaces are being renovated throughout the city to provide better co-working environments, including the “KY 3-27 Co-Working Space,” which is the first publicly operated co-working space in the Yunlin-Chiayi-Tainan region. The space provides training and consultations as well as courses in business registration, taxation, laws and related regulations and business planning.

Health technology is the city’s future, in the eyes of Mayor Twu. His administration has created a Community Home Medical Care and Palliative Care Network to address Taiwan’s aging population. There are now 5 hospitals and 33 clinics within the network, which aims to provide comprehensive care to the aged at home through a Smart Health Cloud Platform that already links in-home diagnostic equipment by 4G mobile to medical centers. The Public Health Department focuses primarily on delivering care in patients' homes, rather than expensive and limited hospital space, through the use of home diagnostic kits that monitor vital signs and general fitness as well as a network of 200-300 teams who provide home visits for postpartum care, hospice care, assessment of a home's fitness for care after a hospital visit and many other services. Data collected from home diagnostic kits and clinics is used to track specific and unusual health risks and to inform public health decisions.

Like Intelligent Communities everywhere, Chiayi City is applying digital technologies to leverage its economic and cultural strengths while preparing for a more competitive future in the global broadband economy.

Population: 269,427

Website: http://www.chiayi.gov.tw/2015web/index.aspx

Smart21 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020

Top7 2017 | 2018

New York, Oct. 19 (CNA) Five cities and counties in Taiwan -- Chiayi, Keelung, Tainan and Taoyuan cities and Yilan County -- were named Wednesday among the world's Smart21 Communities of 2017 by the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

Also included were seven communities from Canada, four from Australia and one each from Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

(19 October 2016 – New York City & Niagara Falls, ON, Canada) - The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) today named the world’s Smart21 Communities of 2017.  This select group of communities, which emerged from a group of nearly 400, will now move on and remain in contention for the prestigious designation of an Intelligent Community Top7, to be named in Taipei, Taiwan in February 2017.  One of the seven will then be named Intelligent Community of the Year at the Intelligent Community Summit and Awards Dinner in New York on June 8, 2017.   www.intelligentcommunity.org/summit

“Internet of Cities” the theme of the New York think-tank’s annual Global Awards Program

Rio is a city as famous for its natural beauty and Carnival spirit as for its crime-plagued slums. After the national capital moved to Brasilia, Rio lost economic clout to Sao Paulo, which became known as Brazil’s business hub while Rio gradually declined due to drugs, corruption and mismanagement. But ambition, good luck and better leadership have given the city a second chance. The city was one of 12 venues where the 2014 World Cup was played, and Rio also won the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Preparation for these games turned the city into a construction site, but also gave it opportunities to revitalize itself, create a better transportation system and deal with long-standing infrastructure problems, including flooding.

Knowledge Squares

Information and communications technology is at the heart of the transformation. A central Operations Center was built by IBM in the aftermath of disastrous flooding in 2010. It has become the nerve center for city administration by displaying data from thousands of cameras and sensors and giving emergency managers a comprehensive view of problems and the resources available to deal with them. The city also runs a high-capacity fiber network, Rio Digital, linking 70 universities, schools and research centers as well as city facilities. But more profound has been the use of ICT to expand economic opportunity and make government better. It has built Knowledge Squares in nearly 40 low-income, crime-ridden neighborhoods. These facilities offer classrooms, labs, digital libraries, recreation areas and a cinema, and provide young people and local communities with skills training in IT, robots, graphics, Web design and video production. The city has also built 32 Casa Rio Digital facilities in partnership with Cisco, Intel and the Sequoia Foundation, which have provided digital literacy training to 69,000 citizens.

How Information Improves Services

The Rio Datamine is an open-data system that makes available vast amounts of city information as well as powering a city-hosted RioApps contest. One RioApps winner was 26-year-old computer engineer Andre Ikeda, who used data on bus transit to create an app that put real-time scheduling information into rider’s hands. The publicity and access to information created public pressure that led to sharp improvements in service.

Luck has played its part. Rio is home to the national oil company Petrobras, and the discovery of vast offshore fields has given a significant boost to the economy. Rio is now receiving twice the foreign direct investment of Sao Paulo. By continuing to open its government and empower its citizens for the digital age, the city is striving create a future worthy of its nickname: Cidade Maravilhosa or the Marvelous City.

Population: 6,500,000

Website: www.rio.rj.gov.br

Smart21 2013 | 2014 | 2015

Top7 2015

Porto Alegre is the capital city of an agrarian state. The community was a success story in heavy industry until rising costs in the Seventies drove industry to relocate to surrounding "satellite cities." To fill the employment gap, the community has focused on building a high-skilled service sector and “clean” industry clusters in IT and life sciences. It has been a “Greenfield” effort, in which government has labored to build digital infrastructure, create the skills and demand for it, and use it to develop a knowledge workforce.

A 350km fiber network called Infovia now connects 190 government buildings. It has generated direct savings on telecom costs for the city and serves as the backbone for a wireless network reaching 93 schools and 100 healthcare facilities. It has also gained its first corporate customers in an industrial park, where broadband helped attract 12 new tenants in 2 years. Porto Alegre has provided over 3,000 low-income residents with free digital skills training, with special accommodations for the elderly and disabled. Using the network, clinics in low-income areas offer remote ultrasound examinations of pregnant women. It has reduced the waiting time for an exam from 4 months to 34 days, and women are now four times less likely to miss a scheduled appointment, because it takes place close to home.

Population: 1,400,000

Website: www.portoalegre.rs.gov.br

Smart21 2009 | 2010

Urban planning works. That is the lesson of Curitiba, which has engaged in proactive planning for its future for nearly 40 years. While other Brazilian cities welcomed heavy industry, Curitiba accepted only non-polluters and developed an industrial district with so much green space that it was derided as a “golf course” until it filled up with more than 3,500 companies. Beginning in the 1970s, the master plan laid out streets, public transportation, shopping, industrial and residential areas. Today, clean water reaches 100% and sanitation 93% of the population, and the city offers a range of services still rare in emerging market nations: municipal healthcare, education and daycare networks, neighborhood libraries, and sports and culture facilities near mass transport terminals.

Bringing High-Speed Connection and High-Tech Learning

Hoping to build further on the success of the entrepreneurial spaces with better infrastructure support, Curitiba began working to facilitate 5G deployment throughout the city in 2019. The city approved decree 989, simplifying the process to acquire an installation and operation license for radio base stations and antennas. The decree also made small antennas and building-top equipment exempt from licensing requirements in their entirety. In response, TIM began operations in Curitiba in 2020, making it one of the first Brazilian cities to host the company’s 5G offerings. Then, in December 2021, Curitiba was selected by the National Government and the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development to be one of 5 cities in Brazil to test 5G technology as part of the 5G Connect project. The pilot project, implemented in 2022, let Curitiba install technology to integrate 5G antennas with intelligent public lighting and provide connectivity up to 100 times faster than 4G for new smart city services.

Beginning in 2020, Curitiba implemented EmpregoTech, a program to train young people ages 16 to 22 for a future in high-tech jobs. EmpregoTech is a partnership between Curitiba City Hall, the Curitiba Agency for Development, Selecty, Prime Control, Digital Innovation One, Endeavor and the Brazilian Association of Technology Companies. The program consists of 5 months of classes in computer programming and a number of soft skills and includes placement in internships with participating companies with a chance for successful students to transition into employment afterward. The first class saw 291 graduates in 2020 and another 300 new vacancies filled in 2021.

Supporting Entrepreneurship

Curitiba has established a total of 9 entrepreneurial spaces throughout the city through a partnership with SEBRAE (Brazilian Service to Support Micro and Small Enterprises). These public offices provide guidance and consultation to local citizens interested in starting new businesses, including training and qualification programs. In 2018, the entrepreneurial spaces hosted nearly 60,000 citizens, with 2,500 completing qualification courses. Curitiba looks to top these numbers in 2019 with 50,000 attendees as of August and over 2,000 qualifications completed. The spaces received a Customer Service Reference Award in 2018 for their successes.

Beginning in 2017, Curitiba has been developing an innovation ecosystem in Pinhão Valley (the Vale do Pinhão). The ecosystem aims to make Curitiba a smarter city by facilitating the development of new technologies and strengthening the economic and social sectors by engaging a large variety of stakeholders from the public and private sectors as well as universities and members of the community. When COVID-19 reached Brazil in 2020, the strength of Pinhão Valley’s partnerships was tested, and the budding ecosystem rose to the challenge. The Curitiba Agency for Development and Innovation worked with local startups and other companies to help entrepreneurs, local street market workers and artisans to create a virtual shop where they could exhibit and sell their goods, as they had previously had no online stores. The Agency also created a variety of online training courses for these businesses to help with their transition to online activities. Other partner companies offered further services to help lessen COVID’s economic impact, including online delivery services, a platform to connect legaltechs, professionals and services and another online platform to provide financial assistance and online payment services. With the help of all these new services, Curitiba created 42,320 jobs during 2021, 7 times more than in 2020.

Promoting Citizen Engagement

Beginning in 2017, Curitiba launched the Speaks Curitiba program to encourage participation in local government from all 75 neighborhoods of the city. Goals include involving citizens in constructing the annual budget and major plans, such as the Pluriannual Plan, the Budget Guidelines Law and the Annual Budge Law, among others. For the first few years, the format was in-person consultation at budget meetings, which resulted in poor attendance and little engagement. The City responded by implementing digital infrastructure to allow for online participation in meetings, dramatically increasing attendance and interest. In 2019, Speaks Curitiba began working with teenagers at public schools to encourage citizen participation from an early age and to teach them more about how the budget process works in the city so that they are better prepared to engage with city decision making as adults.

In March of 2018, the city launched the Curitiba App, a mobile application that provides citizens and tourists with information, services, events and news from City Hall. The app combines the utilities of several smaller existing apps as well as 600 City Hall services. Through the Curitiba App, citizens can quickly and easily access local news, weather alerts and public transit information as well as book appointments with public services. Since its launch, the App has been continuously updated and improved, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when citizens needed access to information remotely even more than usual. As of 2023, the Curitiba App has over 280,700 downloads and 160,000 scheduled appointments for various city services. Curitiba has also seen 1 million people registered for e-citizenship through the App.

With the innovation ecosystem in Pinhão Valley growing steadily, its public-sector partners in Curitiba City Hall, the Curitiba Agency for Development and Innovation and the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (SEBRAE) performed a mapping of its trajectory and future goals with participation from private-sector partners, universities and other institutions. Based on the results, Pinhão Valley’s stakeholders from all sectors decided to create the Pinhão Valley Governance Committee to support the ecosystem and engage more local partners as well as citizens. The Committee is structured into four working groups: Governance, Events, Support to Innovation and Monitoring, allowing for a wide variety of planning, integration and coordination to produce the best possible results. The first meeting to define the Committee is scheduled for early 2021 with more than 100 participants already registered.

Providing Digital Literacy Training for the Underserved

Working with the Social Foundation (FAS) and the Smart City Institute of Curitiba, the city has developed classes to provide digital literacy training for the elderly and low-income citizens. The classes include training on basic computer and smartphone usage, social media platforms and city apps, such as the Curitiba App, with the goal of ensuring underserved groups have better access to public services. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Curitiba continued to offer these courses online, which particularly helped elderly participants stay connected with family and friends. In-person classes were resumed in 2021, and the program also created a Youtube channel to broadcast content to a wider audience that could not attend in person. The city has also partnered with the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) to monitor the progress of participants in these classes to improve and supplement content as necessary.

Green Energy and Transit

City buses travel in separate lanes from the rest of traffic and provide electronic ticketing for riders and fleet management via 3G mobile broadband. Curitiba's next goal is to translate its success in economic development into the broadband economy. An open access fiber network serves the city and much of the state, ensuring high levels of service to business. In keeping with Brazil's National Broadband Plan, the city is deploying a wireless overlay to provide free Internet access in low-income neighborhoods. The city has developed Curitiba Technoparque to turn the intellectual output of its 55 colleges and universities into innovative technologies.

Curitiba is developing multiple studies and projects to produce and implement clean energy in public buildings and public transportation. The city has installed a small hydroelectric plant in Barigui park to supply energy to the park, a project that will be replicated in other parks across the city. With the support of C40-CFF, the city is also developing projects to implement solar panels in four bus terminals and the new sustainable Caximba Neighborhood. The total expected generated power is 8 MW, with expected generation of 980,000 kWh/year (equivalent to the consumption of about 65,000 families). The Curitiba Housing Company is also currently implementing a pilot project to build social housing with solar panels.

From 2008 to 2009, Curitiba grew its high-tech companies by 7% and high-tech employment by 25%. Developments like these have given Curitiba an average per-capita income that is 86% higher than that of Brazil, and the city continues to grow and flourish with more new services and innovations each year since.

Population: 1,963,726

Websites: www.agenciacuritiba.com.br | www.curitiba.pr.gov.br

Intelligent Community of the Year 2024

Smart21 2011 | 2012 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

Top7 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024